Why Marketing Should Treat Content As Queen

You have heard that line before: Content is King in today’s digitally connected world.

While that may be, the value of good content is like having the Queen on your side in a game of chess. Here are some reasons why:

The Queen can move across the board in any direction (except like a horse), and slay anyone in her path.

Great content can clearly go anywhere that others cannot: it can reach prospect and existing buyers who are looking for your solutions or services, and when presented well, bring down their resistance or help build up their interest.

Start ups that are building new products that seek a problem or are aligned to possible solution frameworks should pay heed here. One of our clients in the data search business (email IDs, profiles) invested heavily in building content around topics of leveraging big data, social signals, and best practices in email marketing. Using some judicious distribution tools, this lean start up built a qualified pipeline without a sales team!

The Queen is a protector. When brands stumble or go adrift, content as the Queen can help protect a brand. Many of our clients ask, “Why should we invest in content? Will it get us leads? What is the ROI? Who reads content anyway?”

Where the King is limited to a single tile move, the Queen can be in many places replacing many lost warriors, very ably.

If you think of content similarly, many a lost situation can be deftly saved with judicious content. In a recent example, a client of ours was asked to bid for front end UI work. The prospect client searched their website and almost blocked them from an RFP response, since he did not find anything on their site about UI work, despite them having quite a few wins under their belt. In less than a week, we helped produce very detailed case studies and customer examples that won them the bid, not just the RFP! In effect, the sales was done based on content.

The Queen is an influencer. You need rainmakers? You seek to hire hunters? You have a fairly developed solution but no clients? Invest in content.

Content, the Queen, can change the game. She can influence nay-sayers, searchers, and non-believing prospects to believe in your brand.

Prospects today want to make their decisions without having to speak with your sales teams. Content can fill that need.

I would be delighted to hear your stories on how you used content to build your business.